


The Symbolism of Owls

by catlike



Series: Hope is the Thing with Feathers [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Clara loves cross old owls, F/M, Fluff, and cross old owls love Clara, or at least one does, whouffaldi, whouffle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23899417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catlike/pseuds/catlike
Summary: “This is new,” the Doctor says, staring at the ceramic owl on Clara’s bookshelf.“It is. You don’t like it?”“It looks very cross.”“It looks like you.”“Ha ha ha,” he says dryly, the words coming out in sharp little Scottish staccatos. “Your wit is sparkling, Miss Oswald.”Or: At some point, Clara starts collecting owls.She’s trying not to think of the symbolism there.(She’s kidding herself. She’s an English teacher. Of course she thinks about it.)
Relationships: The Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Clara Oswin Oswald, Twelfth Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Series: Hope is the Thing with Feathers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1728448
Comments: 37
Kudos: 178





	The Symbolism of Owls

It starts at a department store.

It’s Tuesday afternoon and it’s raining, and it’s all quiet and quite unremarkable as Clara makes her way through the store, picking up items she needs: New ankle boots (to replace the ones she lost after a rather unfortunate incident on Kalvinan IV involving space squirrels and sentient quick sand), an area rug (to cover the scorch marks left on her living room carpet after that little sonic fire that happened last Wednesday - she’s so not getting her flat’s deposit back), and a wine rack (because she realized somewhere in between escaping alien rodents and putting out the Doctor-induced fire in her flat, that she really needed to start keeping alcohol on hand.)

It’s as Clara’s walking past the home decorating section and wondering if the TARDIS can age wine that she spots it, sitting on a shelf right at the level of her eyes:

A small, white ceramic owl.

The expression molded on its little glossy face is adorably odd and comically cross, with sculpted feather tufts that nearly look like furrowed eyebrows, and if Clara squints, she can almost imagine it staring down it’s pointed beak and advising her not to be lasagna. Unable to help herself, Clara steps closer and picks it up, carefully running her fingers over it’s ceramic feathers before tapping the tip of its beak and smiling to herself.

It looks funny and grumpy and it doesn’t go with her normal taste in decor or anything else she owns, and she really shouldn’t like it so much, but she does. She _loves_ it.

Clara tries not to think too much about the symbolism there as she plops the little owl in her basket and heads to the register.

(She’s kidding herself. She’s an English teacher. Of course she thinks about the symbolism. 

She buys the owl anyway.)

#

When Clara walks into her flat after work the next day, she finds the Doctor already there, standing by her bookshelf and staring down unblinkingly at the new ceramic owl that’s currently propping up several classic novels ( _treasured_ classic novels, she might add, since they contain autographs and personalized messages to one Miss Clara Oswald even though all the authors had been dead decades before she’d even been born).

“You can blink, you know,” Clara says, slipping her bag off her shoulder. “It’s just a regular statue, not a Weeping Angel owl. I checked.”

Slowly, the Doctor swivels his head to send her a disdainful look over his shoulder.

The resemblance between him and the statue is quite uncanny, really.

“Weeping Angel, no,” he says. “Alien, possibly.”

“Excuse me?”

He shrugs, “Some owls are alien.”

“What do you mean owls are aliens?”

“They can turn their head nearly two-hundred-and-seventy degrees, why do you sound so surprised?” He says, sticking his hands in the pockets of his velvet coat, and looking for all the world like he has a pair of elegantly folded wings. “And I didn’t say all owls are alien. I said _some_ owls are alien.”

“The _best_ owls are alien.”

He blinks at her, looking suspicious, and then he shifts his shoulders, looking much like a bird ruffling it’s feathers. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”

“Not smiling,” Clara says dismissively, as she’s definitely smiling. “So, where are you going to take me today?”

#

The next owl Clara obtains is a teeny tiny little plastic one. She’s much too old for toys, she knows, but this owl has silver feathers and bright blue eyes, and she just couldn’t resist it when she saw it sitting in a plastic toy bin next to the register.

(Yes, again, she’s an English teacher. She _knows_ there’s a comparison to be made there, thank you very much. She’d just been trying not to read too much into it when she bought it.)

And one day, when the Doctor nips off to the TARDIS swimming pool to check on the carnivorous goldfish he’s keeping there until he can take it safely back to its aquatic planet, Clara takes the grey plastic owl out of her purse and places it gently on the TARDIS console.

She supposes that it’s a bit like how one might put a bobble-head dog on their car’s dashboard, but Clara thinks that, just this once, the great space and time machine won’t mind. 

“I think it looks like him,” Clara admits, looking up. “Don’t you?”

The TARDIS’ console flashes bright blue at her words and then burbles something that sounds like whirring laughter.

Apparently, she agrees.

(“I keep moving that _thing_ and the TARDIS keeps putting it back,” the Doctor grouses at Clara a week-and-a-half later, when the plastic owl is still sitting prettily on the console. “Why is she doing that?”

Clara shrugs. “Guess we both have a soft spot for angry owls.”)

#

Clara sits at her vanity, finishing getting ready to go...somewhere. (The Doctor hasn’t quite explained where he’s taking her yet, but he suggested it has something to do with Sontarans and space Vegas, a combination that Clara finds both frightening and fascinating.)

And while she’s fixing her hair and fastening on her watch, the Doctor’s meandering about her bedroom, flipping through the stack of books on her bedside table and fiddling with the assortment of items on her dresser. 

He scans her fish tank (finding that the fish are, rather disappointingly, from a PetCo on this planet and aren't anything remotely alien), sniffs at her perfume bottle (it’s hard to tell, but Clara thinks he likes the scent), mutters at a miniature of Newton’s Cradle (probably, Clara thinks idly, something about him being there the day it was invented), and it’s just when Clara’s opening her jewelry box that she hears him _harumph_. 

It’s a very disapproving harrumph. It sounds all displeased and Scottish.

Clara glances up in the mirror, and watches as his reflection wrinkles his nose at her new throw-pillow sewn in the shape of an owl’s face.

“This is new,” he says.

“It is. You don’t like it?”

”It looks cross. It’s a very cross pillow.”

“It looks like you.”

“Ha ha ha,” he says dryly, the words coming out in sharp little Scottish staccatos. “Your wit is sparkling, Miss Oswald.”

“Oh, I know it is,” she says. “Here, hook this necklace’s clasp for me, will you?”

”Yes, boss.”

#

It is three o’clock in the morning and Clara Oswald is staring straight up at her ceiling, mind reeling, not sleeping, because eight hours before, she had a fight with the Doctor.

She hates fighting with the Doctor. Even when he’s definitely in the wrong and even when she’s truly mad and even when he really says things he shouldn’t and crosses the line.

(If there _is_ a line. It’s gotten hard to tell lately, where boundaries lie, if there are even any in their lives anymore.)

It’s as Clara’s thinking this that she hears an oh so familiar whir and the TARDIS begins to materialize right in the middle of her bedroom, its deep blue beaming in and out of focus.

See? This is what she means by questioning if their relationship has any boundaries anymore. As it is, Clara’s not even really surprised to see the TARDIS. He’s turned up in her bedroom in the middle of the night enough times before. 

(She realizes, shortly after thinking that sentence, exactly how that sounds, and she has to shake herself several times to stop thinking about it.)

Clara’s got a robe on and is standing up, arms crossed, by the time the Doctor steps out. (Or steps in? Never mind, it’s three in the morning and she’s too tired for proper space-dimensional wording, even if she is an English teacher.)

He blinks at her robe, then past her to the sky out her window, and says, “So not seven o’clock then.”

“ _Three_ o’clock.”

“Ah. Well, when you take all of time and space into consideration, being four hours early is still pretty good parallel parking.”

Clara sighs, rubs her temples, “Doctor, what are you doing in my bedroom at three in the morning.”

“It was supposed to be seven.”

“Doctor.”

He sends her a look that suggests he’s suitably miffed as well as chastised, and then gingerly, he reaches into his pocket, and cups something in his hands, and then, hands still cupped awkwardly, he deposits the _something_ in her palms.

The room is still dark, save for the pale star-white glow from the TARDIS, so it takes Clara a moment to see what the Doctor’s given her, but slowly, her eyes adjust to the dim light, and she realizes she’s holding a delicate painted porcelain owl.

She stares at it, stunned, and together, they stand in silence in the pale half-light for a minute.

“You like owls,” the Doctor says matter-of-factly, breaking the silence. “So I got you one. From seventeen-eight-one. Or two. It was hard to tell.”

“Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome.”

(And this is why they have no boundaries, Clara thinks. Because at the end of the day, he’s the one person in the entire universe who truly knows her; knows her intimately, horribly well, and no matter how many times they may break apart, they’ll always come back together, because yes, he’s the type of man who’ll drive her mad but he’s also the type of man who has all of time and space at the tips of his fingers and yet uses his time machine to come to her flat to apologize by way of a knickknack.)

“I love owls,” Clara says very quietly. 

(The Doctor stares at her, like he understands her words must mean _something_ , but he can’t tell what. He thinks, maybe, that it means he’s forgiven. And he’s not wrong, even if he is missing the larger meaning behind her words.)

Clara bites back a smile and ducks her head, studying the tiny porcelain trinket in her hands and when she turns it over, she blinks at the royal-looking French inscription and says, “Wait, the seventeen-eighties? Doctor, did you take this from the _Palace of Versailles_?”

“Er, well, I was there ironing out something with a Slitheen. Kind of pocketed it. I don’t think Marie will mind.”

#

Clara’s collection only grows from there. A braided owl fob she picked up to put her house keys on. A plush owl she won from a claw machine in nineteen-eighty-four after fighting off an alien in an arcade. A blown-glass paperweight she picked up from a book shop. A set of owl-printed oven mits she unfortunately burned after a failed soufflé.

Because, yes, she loves owls and by now she’s learned how to live with the symbolism.

(Especially when she’s living in the space between one heartbeat and the next.)

#

It is Tuesday (or, well, it’s Tuesday somewhere), and Clara Oswald is winding her way through an alien bazaar. She doesn’t look a day over thirty, but she’s well over three-hundred.

(How far over three-hundred, she doesn’t quite know. You lose track of silly little things like ages and years when you’re spending your time spinning out across the stars, saving planets and cheating death.)

Clara’s only there for things she needs: a change of clothes (hers got a bit burnt after saving that colony on Axmis from the fire trials), goggles to use when repairing her TARDIS’ circuits (she’ll never admit it, but she talks to her old girl as much as the Doctor talked to his), and a new barstool for her ‘diner’ (she’s been missing one ever since she broke the old one over a Dalek. It’s a long story.)

But then she spots it, in the stall selling antiques, sitting on a stack of crates right at the level of her eye:

A small, white ceramic owl.

It’s old and weathered, its paint is scratched and its horns are cracked, but it looks exactly like the very first owl she got, so, so, so many years ago.

(For all Clara knows it’s the very same owl. For all she knows, after her death on Trap Street, the ceramic owl and her other belongings were packed up and donated and put in a thrift shop and bought as gifts and eventually passed on in wills as antiques until they now sit, some hundreds of years later, miles and miles and miles away from Earth, on an alien planet, simply waiting for her to find them again.

Stranger things have happened. She’s proof of that.)

Carefully, Clara picks the owl up, smiling at its glowering beak and the grumpy look in its eyes. 

(By now he’d have a different face, she knows. But she also knows that thanks to the wonders of time travel, the owlish version of him she knows and loves is still somewhere out there, right now, right this very minute. And maybe, there’s a version of her with that version of him. 

The thought is comforting.)

“It’s a very old antique,” the alien vendor tells her as she runs her fingers over the carved feathers. “Made in the form of some Earthen creature.”

“It’s an owl,” Clara tells them, handing over her currency.

“An _owl_ ,” the vendor repeats, carefully rolling the odd word over its blue tongue. “What’s an owl?”

Clara smiles, holds the ceramic close, and she thinks.

She thinks of the shade of his eyes and the sound of his voice and the rare curve of his smile and the way he made her laugh, and she is over three-hundred years-old but she’s still an English teacher and she’s still very much aware of the deeper meaning behind the owl and the literary device she’s using as she smiles and says:

“It’s something wonderful.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was trying to work on the next installment in my Whouffle Stardust and Storybooks series when I went on Tumblr (yes, I know that’s something of an oxymoron, leave me alone) and saw a cool post by chipsandcoffee pointing out that Clara had an owl statue in her flat and I immediately knew I had to write something short about Clara and her fondness for cute, cross owls. 
> 
> If I’m not writing in my free time, I can be found on Tumblr procrastinating writing. Come find me and help me ignore my many wips! Username: clara-oswin-oswald.


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